On June 14, the Supreme Court ruled that a semi-automatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a “machine gun” under federal law “because it does not fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger.’” And even if it could, it does not do so “automatically.”
A bump stock is a non-mechanical accessory for a semi-automatic rifle that has a single purpose: it allows the shooter to rapidly reengage the trigger of a semi-automatic rifle and achieve a high rate of fire similar to that of a machine gun. But, according to a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court, converting a rifle into something like a machine gun does not make it a machine gun.
For that reason, the court struck down a rule issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that prohibited the production, sale and possession of bump stocks, finding that the ATF improperly classified firearms armed with a bump stock as a machine gun.
The ATF rule was promulgated during the Trump administration, at a time when the country was horrified by the carnage caused by a bump stock-equipped semi-automatic weapon in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, when a gunman opened fire at a Las Vegas music festival in 2017, killing 59 people and wounding hundreds of others. Last week’s ruling vacated the ATF rule.
The court’s decision on bump stocks was hailed as a major victory for gun rights advocates and hard-line Second Amendment proponents, even though the decision was not technically a gun rights ruling.
Because of the ruling, bump stocks will be back on the market and available to gun owners unless Congress steps in to pass legislation to prohibit the sale of bump stocks and other devices designed to transform semi-automatic firearms to operate like fully automatic weapons.
Although such proposed legislation was introduced in bipartisan bills last summer in both the Senate and the House, there is little chance that the bills will be moved forward at this time. That is the reality. It’s also a shame.
The court’s decision is technically correct. Current federal law outlaws machine guns. Machine guns shoot multiple bullets automatically or by a single function of the trigger. Semi-automatic rifles equipped with bump stocks, on the other hand, reload a new cartridge after firing, but the shooter must pull the trigger each time for a shot to be fired. Bump stocks can help generate hundreds of lethal bullet shots per minute, but the process is not automatic.
While our sympathy lies with the minority view of the dissenters, led by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who accused the majority of turning a blind eye to the reality of gun violence and making it more difficult to adopt measures aimed at preventing bloodshed, we disagree with her assertion that the majority ruling pressed an “artificially narrow definition.”
The statutory language is clear. Congress could have created a broader definition of a “machine gun,” but didn’t. It is now up to Congress to fix the law and ban bump stocks and all assault weapons. It’s a chance to save lives.
